Google versus Facebook for Online Marketing – JZ Marketing

If you’re using social media to help market your business, you’re probably posting content to your Facebook business page. And you probably also pay at least some attention to search engine optimization (SEO) for your business website to make sure people can find it through Google search. But when it comes to spending some of your precious marketing dollars on digital ads, which platform is best for you – Facebook Ads or Google AdWords? In a head-to-head comparison pitting Google versus Facebook, who wins?

Google versus Facebook: How They’re Different

Google AdWords is the primary platform businesses use for pay-per-click (PPC) advertising. In fact, some people think PPC and Google AdWords are one-and-the-same thing, but you could engage PPC ad campaigns on other platforms such as the Yahoo! Bing Network, Advertising.com (an AOL platform) and, of course, Facebook. They’re all PPC networks, but in a more technical sense Google AdWords is about paid search advertising while Facebook is about paid social advertising. Google AdWords PPC campaigns are text-based ads that come up when users search using particular keywords using the Google search engine, so it’s helping your business find new customers via searches. Facebook, on the other hand, is more about reaching people based on their interests and online behaviors, so it’s helping people who might be interested find your business. See the difference? Google is for paid search, Facebook is for paid social.

Google Wins for Access to People Conducting Searches

Google is the undisputed global champion of online search engines, fielding more than 3.5 billion queries each and every day. If you want to reach people who are searching for things related to your business, you simply can’t do better than leveraging Google AdWords for your business. I mentioned above that Google search ads are text-based, but there is a second division within Google AdWords called Google Display Network that can handle non-text ads that appear anywhere and everywhere across the World Wide Web. So when it comes to reaching a truly vast audience of people conducting Internet searches, you simply can’t do better the Google. Hence the reason Google by default is the largest and most popular PPC network. Part of the task in using the Google AdWords Search Network involves bidding on the keywords you want to use as the target for your ads. The cost of “winning” the right to have search ads for those keywords varies, but in general as long as your ads are of a high quality and relevant to the targeted end-users, it won’t cost you an arm and a leg. Google rewards quality and relevance above all else. And the Search Network has lots of features that can help boost the quality of your ads.

Facebook Wins for Access to Paid Social Advertising

When it comes to PPC advertising, Facebook feels like the new kid on the block compared to Google, but when you focus on what Facebook brings to the table, it’s the definitive global leader when it comes to paid social advertising. After all, Facebook passed the 2 billion monthly users milestone back in June of 2017. While that number of monthly users is impressive, what Facebook really brings to the table is the ability to define and reach your target audience with unparalleled accuracy and precision. Facebook generates a huge amount of data on people based on what they post to their Facebook accounts. If you have a well-defined existing audience of customers and data about them, you can literally upload that data into Facebook and have it create what’s called a “lookalike audience” so you can target your Facebook ads to users who are very similar to your existing customer base. One of the main differences between the Google AdWords Search Network with its text-based ads and Facebook is that the latter is all about the visual appeal of display ads, which means you have to pay very careful attention to the graphic design aspect of your ads. Another very appealing dimension of Facebook Ads is how affordable they can be. Simply boosting a great post for $5 can yield impressive results and opens up the world of digital marketing to smaller businesses with limited budgets.

Google versus Facebook is the Wrong Approach

Okay, here’s where I have to admit I did a disservice by framing the topic of this article as Google versus Facebook – as if it is an either/or choice and only one comes out on top. It should be clear by now, however, that it’s not really a matter of either Google or Facebook – that’s making a false dichotomy. Instead, this should be viewed as both Google and Facebook. Taking a both/and approach rather than an either/or approach will give you the best of both worlds! But doing so really does require a level of expertise most people running a small or medium-sized business simply lack or don’t have the time to develop. And that’s where a marketing agency such as JZ can help. Contact JZ Marketing and find out what a dedicated team of professionals can do for you in the world of online advertising through platforms such as Facebook and Google!